Between inequality and difference: the creole world in the twenty‐first century

Abstract

Abstract A major theme in contemporary social theory is the questioning and destabilization of boundaries – self/other, culture/nature and gender being the most obvious areas. Not least for this reason, creole identities, ostensibly premised on openness and mixing, deserve renewed attention. Although the term creolization, as borrowed from linguistics, is sometimes used in a broad comparative sense, the creole world refers to the outcome of a particular historical experience, namely that of displacement, slavery, emancipation and its aftermath reverberating into the present. Key terms are uprootedness, cultural mixing and creole languages existing in diglossic situations with metropolitan ones. Creole intellectuals in the Caribbean have celebrated the cultural creativity characteristic of these societies but have been criticized for ignoring class, racism and gender issues. By embracing the egalitarianism and openness of creoledom, they have become vulnerable to criticism of being handmaidens of neoliberalism or neocolonialism. Controversies over creole identity are related to fundamental questions in anthropology. Drawing on material mainly from the Indian Ocean region, in this article I attempt to create a dialogue between debates over creole identity and theoretical questions raised in social and cultural theory concerning the relationship between cultural difference and social inequality.

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